The University of Illinois' Sustainable Electronics Initiative has published a suite of four documents of e-Waste Terms and Definitions. How well do they reflect the current state of the global e-waste discussion?

The fact sheets contain lots of terms and useful hot-linked citations. Most of the relevant terms can be found somewhere in one of the documents, although the location an individual term is not always obvious. On balance, they constitute one of the most comprehensive e-waste glossaries I have seen.

One important omission is IEEE 1680.1 Section 4, the basis for the EPEAT program. IEEE 1680 contains many standardized terms and definitions related to e-waste. Likewise, I could find no mention of the ISO 14001:2004 Environmental Management Systems standard. Also missing is some of the more esoteric e-cycling terminology favored by deep practitioners, along with one of my favorite terms of practice, "sweating assets" (extending service life to reduce the rate at which gear is converted to e-waste). The e-waste field is evolving and I look forward to future updates to these documents.

The "General Terms" fact sheet is being promoted by the Great Lakes Regional Pollution Prevention Roundtable online and via Twitter (@GLRPPR). Removed from the context of its three companion pieces, it can appear to be incomplete. As a resident of a Great Lakes state, I want to see the best possible global information available to our binational region. Comments are welcome, below.

Click on the "recycle" tag under this post's title to learn more about e-waste/cyberwaste, including dramatic photos.